Golligow

You just can't make films better than this. It compares a little with Moulin Rouge which too was a masterpiece, a 9 out of 10 masterpiece, and last year's Hugo, a 1/10 rotten egg - it has all of Hugo's style plus spadefuls more, but none of Hugo's manifold failings: essentially a plot and characters you'd have to be a dormouse to engage with. The plot and characters here are right out of the top drawer, it's Anna Karenina by TOLSTOY! The source material is the real deal, and Tom Stoppard is a past master at getting the best out of these old stories. So, all good, then you watch the first ten minutes and it is very annoying, just (it felt) too stylized and self conscious (as a lot of pseuds here have levelled). But I gradually got it, bought into the style, and then it was just unrelenting in its beauty, it frankly has to be the most beautiful film I've ever laid my eyes on, think Doctor Zhivago crossed with Age of Innocence (both great films)and you're half way there to getting in the clothes of this film. I can't believe Joe Wright isn't in there for best director at the Baftas and the film isn't up for best film - I've seen all this year's contenders, Django Unchained (9/10) Lincoln (8/10) Zero Dark Thirty (7/10) Silver Linings Playbook (6.5/10) Life of Pi (8/10) etc etc, but this is the only one that get's the big 10, it is in a different league creatively to those others, yes, even Lincoln with its Stellar cast and director (wasn't it just a bit dull, really?) But not this, this is not dull, it sparkles beautifully, is unforgettable. I wanted to have a little gripe about the casting of Keira Knightly, but I've changed my mind, I can forgive even that.

This film is expensive bloated nonsense. Watch out for a gut churning funny performance from Michael Caine - he kills (as in ruins) every scene he's in, his lines are terrible and his delivery just risible, and why use these actors who've had that surgery that keeps their eyes open and makes them look so conspicuously Hollywood rather than anything like the type of character they're trying to portray? The story swivels on a conceit revealed far too late in the day for it resonate, it just leaves you feeling cheated, and it is silly anyway, and the whole thing is just overblown and for low IQ boys, silly fights, silly toys, not genre defining but clichéd and hackneyed. Just a franchise and director going through the motions using pyrotechnics to obscure the shallow truth.